eBay's Braintree will have Bitcoin payments active in the 'coming months'
A subsidiary of online auction site eBay has announced it is investigating how to integrate Bitcoin payments into its online service to provide consumers cutting-edge purchase options.
EBay has not confirmed it will accept bitcoins
Braintree, now a unit of eBay's PayPal, currently processes the payments of Uber and Airbnb among other apps and websites. It has announced that it will be capable of accepting crypto-currency transactions in “the coming months”.
Bill Ready, head of Braintree announced at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, that the firm will be one of the first major payment groups to embrace Bitcoin.
Ready said: “We’re announcing PayPal’s first foray into Bitcoin. Over the coming months we’ll allow our merchants to accept Bitcoin. On the consumer side it will be a sleek experience.”
As a result of the firm’s work, many of its clients will be able to directly accept payment in the form of the digital currency when the service is rolled-out worldwide later this year.
Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc told Bloomberg that Braintree’s Bitcoin payment system “opens the door for PayPal to integrate Bitcoin into its main wallet functionality. If that happens millions of retailers will de facto be accepting Bitcoin overnight”.
Although, eBay owns Braintree which is looking into the crypto-currency payments, the online retailer has yet to confirm whether it will also accept Bitcoins.
Last year, eBay acquired Braintree for £500m to strengthen its presence on the mobile platform.
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